Growing up in a country where subjects like history and English were nothing but a study of dead people and their (completely outdated) ideas and experiences makes it difficult to want to learn more. I think, like many of my fellow students in the 80’s, that I was under the impression that this kind of read-a-book-then-get-lectured-and-take-a-test education was the only way to learn. It’s certainly a very white middle class traditional style of educating students. Even in college I had a lot of classes where I sat amidst 500 students looking at slides of historical art, memorizing the artist, location, and medium of the piece for later tests.
If you asked a group of people how many of them like to sit in lectures, take notes, and then regurgitate that information in a test situation I suspect you would find very few people who are breaking down doors to get this kind of learning experience. Why, then, do we think that this is how we should teach adults in educational settings, either in or out of the workplace? While the main goal in my college classes, as far as I could tell, was to be sure I could memorize well, my belief is that instead of memorizing information we should be encouraging college students to learn how to question, analyze, and broaden their ways of thinking about and perceiving the world.
In the corporate world we are often trying to impart important information to our employees, whether it be safety training or a computer skills course. We want them to remember facts and procedures and execute them on the job. Adults are not empty gourds waiting to be filled with what we consider to be exciting or important information, though. They don’t always come to their classes with enthusiasm. In fact, sometimes they are hostile and wishing they didn’t have to attend, or are bound up thinking about other things they need to be getting done, or a plethora of other distractions that adults are busy dealing with in their jobs and lives. When they arrive at a class where we expect them to listen to a lecture, memorize, and then pass a test we are setting them up for failure if we don’t offer them ways to assimilate the new information into their knowledge scheme.
We have all heard how people learn better if they are actively engaged in their own learning experience, and I believe firmly that this is true. Why, then, do employees continue to attend classes that bore them to tears? Even the dullest of subjects can be taught in a way that allows students to find ways to make meaning of the information within the context of their own lives and jobs. So I am starting this blog as a way to speak about ways in which education in the corporate world can be improved, and to highlight some of the amazing ideas that are being implemented in the exciting field of adult education. Humans are capable of learning new information from the moment they are born until the moment of their last breath. What a broad realm of experiences we have to share and learn from!
